This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

15th November 2008

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Tuesday 4th November 2008 will be remembered by most global citizens as the day Barack Obama was voted in as president of the United States. For a small group of South Africans, however, the day will have additional resonance.

As Americans went to the polls in their millions, the results of a different vote were announced at a ceremony in Johannesburg: the Standard Bank Young Artist awards in the categories of dance, drama, visual art, music and jazz.

Thabo Rapoo was the first recipient of 2009, acknowledged for his already substantial repertoire of dance performances and choreography. Like a number of winners of the award before him, Rapoo honed his craft at Moving into Dance Mophatong (MIDM) and his award is another feather in the company’s cap in this, its thirtieth year. Saying that the award was a dream from which he was still expecting to wake, Rapoo paid tribute to MIDM mentors such as Gregory Maqoma – also a previous recipient of a Young Artist award.

Ntshieng Mokgoro, accepting the award for drama, also acknowledged the support of a former winner in her category, Lara Foot Newton, who first recognised and promoted her talent. But Mokgoro (who does not have any formal training as a theatre practitioner but already has some years of experience as a director behind her) was in no doubt about her own role in her success, declaring: “I do, indeed, deserve this!”

UK-based opera singer Jacques Imbrailo was given the award for music on the basis of numerous successes, both locally and abroad, the most recent of which was the Audience Prize at last year’s BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition. The former Drakensberg Boys’ Choir member, again emphasising the importance of mentors and teachers in developing young artists, expressed particular thanks to Prof Werner Nel. Imbrailo, modestly suggesting that he has graduated from being a “baby singer” to a “toddler singer”, indicated that he will be “sticking to the classics”; he believes that the operas of Mozart, Verdi and Puccini best suit a young voice, and that more modern compositions can wait until he has grown further as a singer.

Drummer Kesivan Naidoo was the final recipient of the evening – for jazz – and his acceptance speech was by far the most memorable. Interspersing light-hearted quips and his inimitably wicked laugh with serious assertions, he used the platform to challenge government’s financial commitment to artistic development. Naidoo, a professed Springbok supporter, nevertheless noted that “In sport, there is always a winner and a loser, but in music, there’s no loser; I wish that art received the same funding as sport does.”

Quoting a fifteenth-century Italian statesman to the effect that, “If you want to change the morals of the people, you have to change the music they listen to”, Naidoo demonstrated his firm convictions about the significance of jazz and other art forms in this country. Alluding to the award sponsor’s previous slogan, he argued that the process of nurturing young musicians should be “simpler, better and faster”.

Patronage of the arts is, of course, an ancient dilemma. Many artists would not survive without sponsorship, but at the same time there is always the possibility that their art might be compromised by an actual or perceived allegiance to patrons. At the awards ceremony, there was much witty banter about opening bank accounts and using bank cards, but Standard Bank thoroughly deserves all the PR mileage it gets from sponsoring the Young Artist awards. As Naidoo affirmed: “The Department of Arts and Culture has a lot to learn from corporate sponsors.”